No Easy Answers
by Quetzal1
Summary: Cyclonus ponders the state of things. G1 Early 3rd season.


Author's note: Regrettably, none of the characters in this story belong to me. They all belong to Hasbro and others. All dialogue in italics is quoted from the third season of the TV show. This was actually the first Transformers story I wrote, but the second posted here. It's just a little one shot thing I did to try and get a feel for that world. I know there's an ongoing debate out there as to who Cyclonus and Scourge, et al were created from. I like to think Cyclonus used to be Skywarp. If I have the wherewithal to ever get that story on paper, you will see why.

XxXxX

No Easy Answers  
By: Quetzal

From the broken and littered landscape of Chaar he could clearly see Cybertron off in the distance, sparkling among the stars. The longer he watched it, the thing that should still be theirs and but the start of ownership of the entire universe, the angrier he became. Without even thinking he lashed out and kicked away a burned and twisted piece of something that was nearest his left foot. The debris arced gracefully through the air and then came down to bounce once before falling from the rooftop where Cyclonus sat, brooding. He heard it hit the ground with an echoing metallic clang.

"Calm down," he thought, "you're beginning to act like Galvatron."

The thought made him feel even lower and then he felt guilty that he felt bad about the comparison. This was not how things were supposed to go at all. Autobots controlling Cybertron, Decepticons exiled to this orbiting trash pile, Quintessons playing both ends against the middle. And worst of all, the one to whom his own life was dedicated had been reduced to a raving maniac. True, there were still flashes of the old brilliance, but oh what one had to deal with in between! Cyclonus looked down at the fresh scrape in the paint on the back of one arm. It didn't hurt or anything and it could have been far worse, but he didn't really like having it as a constant reminder of what he knew all too well.

There was no telling from one cycle to the next what awaited if you were summoned by the Mighty One. Hopefully it would be because he wanted an audience while he ranted almost endlessly about one thing or another. On these occasions, you could remain silent and just wait for him to wind down to where he was so disgusted that he wanted to be alone again. Cyclonus had been created with an inordinate amount of patience, befitting a being whose sole purpose was battle and the attendant plotting and strategy, and so it wasn't hard for him to endure this. However, though no one could ever make him admit it, witnessing hour after hour of such unfocused, unrelenting rage troubled him a great deal. When he did catch himself feeling restless after a couple of hours, he would remind himself that this was far more preferable than the alternative.

Sometimes in the course of a tirade, (like today) Galvatron would suddenly begin demanding answers from whoever was handy. Most often it was Cyclonus or Scourge, other times it was some hapless Decepticon who had blundered into the situation. The blunderer would, of course, never have a suitable answer and would take a pretty good beating and perhaps even be shot a time or two as the wrong answer or denial of any knowledge at all sent Galvatron into a fresh fury. Cyclonus was far more skilled at talking his way out of the situation than anyone else. Sometimes he could shift the blame to another, the trick was not to make it sound like that's what he was doing. Once as an experiment, he actually got the blame laid on a couple of Stunticons who had nothing to do with the events in question, and Galvatron would have known this… if he wasn't insane.

Of course when Wildrider and Breakdown were called in and asked about it, they were unable to come up with anything close to a coherent answer. Cyclonus was without sympathy but he had understood well the way those two felt. When Galvatron's blazing red optics turned on him accompanied by the sparks and small arcs of electricity on either side, it would have frozen his blood if he'd had any. Sometimes, (also like this day) Cyclonus could not get himself off the hook no matter what he tried. As he was being punched and thrown around he could not fight back because he felt it would be treasonous to raise his hand against their leader. The best he could manage was to block and try to talk sense into Galvatron or maybe offer a new idea for his overloaded circuits to seize upon. Today wasn't as bad as a lot of times. He'd only had to block one hit, but it was pretty hard even for a glancing blow.

Sometimes he suspected their esteemed leader decided to smack him around a little as a way to keep him in his place, and the thought dimmed his spark a little. To think that he, Cyclonus, the most loyal and devoted warrior amongst all Decepticons, was not trusted.

Then again such mistrust wasn't so hard to understand after the Torkulon debacle. He was lucky to still be alive after that. He had only Galvatron's spontaneous blind hatred and other targets to thank. Although… once in a while he wondered if the exposure to the Allia and the planet itself didn't do some good. Since then Galvatron had come up with a few plans, weird and convoluted though they may have been. It was far better than just tearing around randomly destroying things.

In his days as Megatron, evidently there was never a shortage of ideas (although maybe a weakness for various sorts of ray devices.) Cyclonus could not recall anything before his own rebirth at the hands of Unicron. His optics had activated and there he was, alive and knowing only that it was his duty and desire to serve Galvatron and the Decepticon cause, even if it meant his own life. Galvatron had evidently retained memories from his prior incarnation but Cyclonus had nothing nor did Scourge or any of the Sweeps. He guessed it was because of the fact that they were fashioned from the wreckage of dead Decepticons while Megatron had still lived.

That slagging Rodimus Prime! Galvatron's condition was all his fault. Cyclonus hated no individual more unless maybe it was those putrid bags of pus, the Quintessons. Galvatron had been brilliant and fearless. Now he was just irrational fury walking. The memory of fishing him out of the plasma on Thrull still haunted him. His hopes were so high and then….

Scourge had pulled Galvatron free of the glowing plasma and he said something, Cyclonus was too far back to make it out but wasted no time getting to the ground. Now they had a leader! Now they would be a force to be feared again! But then…

"_Mighty Galvatron! We have come to deliver you from…" _Cyclonus had begun, absolutely delighted to see their leader alive and well again, before being cut off.

"_FROM MY EMPIRE OF ASH!" _Galvatron had roared at him and then hit him on top of the head.

"_MY BASTION OF BRIMSTONE? _Another hit, a harder one.

"_MY KINGDOM OF DESOLATION!" _And then punched him in the midsection hard enough to send him flying into the plasma. He had continued yelling at him even though Cyclonus was submerged and couldn't hear anything.

"_DID I ASK YOU FOR DELIVERANCE?" _Cyclonus had surfaced and was pulling himself out of the plasma. Just that brief exposure was beginning to make certain logic circuits buzz in a most unpleasant way.

"_DID I?" _And then: wham! He was viciously kicked right back in, and a rock formation sticking up from the plasma pond was shattered by two laser blasts. Then an abrupt change. _"Cyclonus, how wonderful to see you again!" _He wasn't sure if it was sarcasm or what

It went a little better then, aside from a brief skirmish with the Sweeps, but they were quickly brought into line. The other Decepticons were pulled back into the fold except for that traitor Octane. But it was soon obvious even to those with the slowest of processors that Galvatron was not himself, flying into rages that resulted in pointless destruction. Megatron never pulled that kind of thing, at least not without provocation, so said some of the other Decepticons. Quite frankly, Cyclonus was starting to regret missing that era, or at least being able to remember it. More and more he had heard reminisces of the other Decepticons and the bitter comparisons to the current state of affairs.

'Even being stuck on Earth all the time was better than this!'

'We had been feared and respected and now we are hardly considered a threat!'

'Someone needs to do something!' Treasonous excuses for Decepticons. In some ways he could see why Galvatron would be so furious all the time. With few exceptions, his troops had degenerated into a bunch of lazy, treacherous good for nothings. Too bad his armada and most of the Sweeps had been killed in the Great War. Then things could have been whipped back into shape. These…he wouldn't even call them soldiers...these scraps cared only for what could benefit themselves and be gained with minimal effort. They had no concept of duty or sacrifice or loyalty to a greater cause. Some of them considered Cyclonus to be a zealot who mentally wasn't much better off than Galvatron (and unbeknownst to him a few suspected that he harbored feelings of a completely different kind toward their leader.)

Their cowardly nature, however, was the thing that made the majority of them easier to control. They all feared Cyclonus, as well they should, but some of them were made more dangerous because of it. Take Motormaster, for instance. He was an arrogant bully and an instigator. He had actually had the servos to threaten him once, after some new perceived outrage from Galvatron. While it was tempting to rip out his voice processor and then shove it back in through his optics, Cyclonus had let it slide for the time being. They were just too few in number to go around being killed as an example by their own kind…for now. Swindle and Laserbeak had been with Motormaster that day and they would also suffer appropriately when the time was right. Well, maybe not Laserbeak. He never said anything so maybe the mechanical beast was just spying for Soundwave. But if he was, what did that mean? Soundwave had been Megatron's right hand so maybe he was looking to get that position back? Nothing about him was easy to read. Having no memories from whoever he used to be was most frustrating at times like this. If he could remember he'd know who to watch a little closer.

If only there was some way to cure Galvatron's madness. The Quintessons had told him there were planets that specialized in that kind of thing, but you could not trust those repulsive creatures. They knew exactly what would happen on Torkulon. Cyclonus was far harder on himself than Galvatron had been. What could he have been thinking? The first few moments on the surface of the planet should have told him that it was a bad idea and he had been mislead. All those malfunctioning organisms! If the Torkuli knew so much why were these creatures living in cages and obviously still faulty? The sight of his beloved leader enclosed in one of those living cages and struggling against the nasty purple webbing that bound him forced Cyclonus to summon up every last bit of self-control he had to avoid massacring the Torkuli right then and there. He had to keep reminding himself that it was all for Galvatron's own good but when his leader was totally frenzied and screaming such sentiments as:

"_You have no right to take who I am!"_

Cyclonus had been truly pained. Perhaps he was not completely without sympathy after all. He should have put a stop to the whole thing. His stupidity had nearly doomed the entire cause. And he was still waiting to be punished. Galvatron seemed to have forgotten this transgression but who knew for sure? He had said that he hated him, but honestly Galvatron hated everything, and as soon as some new target for his wrath came along he promptly forgot the last. And speaking of wrath, when the Empire was restored the first thing Cyclonus was going to do was round up all those five-faced little beasts, rip their tentacles off, gouge out their optics and then he would really begin to hurt them. And if it were solely up to him, the next thing he would do would be to rid the planet of humans. If not for help from the interfering Autobots, they would have been wiped out long ago, but now they were free to come and go as they pleased on Cybertron while he and the others were stuck here. Maybe he'd let them live, but not on Cybertron. Nor would anything else that wasn't Decepticon. But it wasn't up to him and they were a long, long way from taking back the planet.

He stood and began slowly pacing along the length of the rooftop. The fact that he even had to be concerned with such matters frustrated him further. Of course it wasn't all entirely hopeless.

The Constructicons had been making some slow progress salvaging a few buildings for use as headquarters and Hook had even discovered some old generators and was producing some very, very low-grade energon. Nearly everyone knew this except, of course, their leader. It was agreed that the mere fact this energon wasn't even industrial grade would probably just serve to incite Galvatron to wreck the entire set up. Either that, or he'd go the paranoid route and think they were stockpiling it to use in some kind of attempt to overthrow him. That would be bad. They were constantly tinkering with the process and were gradually improving it. He himself had undertaken plenty of low-level flights around the planet searching for anything that looked useful and Scourge had led the Sweeps on requisition missions to the Planet of Junk for more items. It appalled him to no end to be a scavenger but desperate times required adaptation. He harbored no dreams that Chaar would become another Cybertron, but it could certainly be made more livable until it was possible to take back their rightful home. (And they WOULD take it back!) Then it could be improved further and used as an outpost or something along those lines. He truly wished Galvatron could see all this potential and possibility. Cyclonus looked out at the vast ruined landscape. Perhaps some means of showing him would appear. It certainly wouldn't just drop out of the sky but he was very patient.

When you lived indefinitely, there was little that was not possible.


End file.
